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In America the opportunities for artists to earn a living exclusively on
their art-making activities are fairly rare. In 1933 the New Deal administration
under President Franklin D. Roosevelt made a momentous decision to employ
artists in community projects in order to lift America’s spirits and bolster
a sense of patriotism after the Great Depression of 1929. The largest and
most prolific of these programs were based in New York. In The Soup
Kitchen the faceless, suited men waiting for a free bowl of soup
is a chilling reminder of the hardships suffered by many city dwellers in
the 1930s, especially African Americans. Norman Wilfred Lewis continually
documented the hardships of life endured in and around Harlem, because he
believed that the power of these images could foster social change. Lewis
also worked hard to improve the lives of African-American artists by lobbying
for their economic and political rights, fighting for a federally funded
art center in Harlem—which became the historic Harlem Community Art Center
—and lobbying for increased numbers of African American artists employed
by the W.P.A .
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